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CGIndia bring you quite Useful and Free tutorial for 3ds Max Users. The tutorials is created by CG Artist Mario Malagrino who shows us how to achive Advance Illumination in 3d Studio Max. If you like to share your knowledge with CG Community and have any tutorials, we will be glad to feature them on our website along with description about author and website link. Send your tutorials to cgindia@gmail.com

Illumination Tutorial for Industrial/Product/Furniture Design

This tutorial explains all steps to illuminate an object with a technique which simulates the illumination
techniques of a photo studio. Before we begin it is very important to inform you that we will use "Mental Ray"as render engine (version 8 and 9 of 3D Studio Max).
Mental Ray is a very stable render engine and it allows you to have very realistic renderings. Since we are
using Mental Ray for this tutorial it is very important to use "real dimensions" for all the objects that we have
to create. Otherwise the result will not be realistic. It means that you have to go to CUSTOMIZE ->UNITS
SETUP and choose the units that you want to use. In any case you should get used to create objects with
their real dimensions so that you get a feeling for correct dimensions and proportions.

The first step to do is to create an "environment object"(it is similar to the rooms which are used in the
professional field of photography)on which later we will place our object to illuminate (this is ideal for
product/industrial design and furniture design). There are different shapes that you can create to have an environment-object which will be reflected correctly on your object and will give very good render results (image 0 ). What many designers don't know is exactly this last point:in order to have a good 3d rendering,the object has not only to receive a good lightning,but it needs to receive a good reflection of the room in which it is placed.

The color that you should assign to the environment-object (the room)should be white like the walls of a
photo-studio !The material should not have specular highlights.In this way the color of the environment will
not affect the color of your product design (especially if you use reflective materials).Of course it is the
designer's choice to change the color to a different one.
Let's do the first steps for an environment-object.Create a spline like the letter "L".Then select the corner
vertex and go to "modify",select the "fillet"tool and smooth the corner like in image below ”.

If you like to have a very smooth environment you should put a very big value in the fillet slot.Now we need
to create an outline of this shape (the thickness of the walls).Select "spline"and go to outline the spline with
the command "outline"that you can find again in the modify panel.
From this point you can create both environment objects (the linear or the circular one).To create the
"straight"one (which will be the one that I will use for the tutorial)you must assign to the spline an "extrude"
modifier from the modifier list (image below)

To create the “circular ” environment object you must first move the PIVOT/GIZMO to the correct location. Check below image.

Just go to hierarchy,click on the button "affect pivot only"and move the pivot (this button allows you to
move/rotate the pivot independently from the object)!After this step assign to the spline a "lathe"modifier
from the modifier list.You will see that you will create an object similar to a tube.Go to the modify panel and
increase the segment number to have a smoother shape.Now go to Degrees and put 180 ° in the slot.You
should have the result of below image

Both of these two objects are really useful.It is your choice which one to use for your renderings.

Create a teapot on the environment-object (in the room)and create a simple skylight.
Remember that the illumination direction of the skylight can't be changed,i will ALWAYS come from the top. (check above image)
For now you can leave the standard multiplier value=1.
To be able to render correctly with a skylight you must enable final gather in Mental Ray (without final gather
the skylight will not work - check images below).

For the first test rendering put a low number like 40 in the Final Gather Samples slot (in Max 9 you must use the Rays per FG point slot).Make now a test rendering.You should have the same result like in image below.
Tip for test render :a smaller render size will allow you to have a shorter render time.

The skylight is NOT able to create specular-highlights on the object.The specular-highlights are of course
VERY important to simulate different kind of materials.This is the reason why you should never use only one
skylight in your scenes.It is important to have an additional light.If you want to have a very strong specular-
highlights like on car paint materials you should use Mr Omni lights (you can find the tutorial of the car paint
material in the FDA tutorials for materials).For this tutorial I will use a photometri target area light.This light
is very soft,it gives very good and realistic results. Let's create an target area light like on image below.

It is important to consider that the softness of the shadows of this light will change with the size of the light
(big size:soft shadows,small size:sharp shadows).The shadow type MUST be "raytraced shadows",only
this kind of shadow will give optimal results with mental ray.Don't create a light with a too big size,otherwise
the shadows will be too soft and will cover too big areas,this will darken the environment and will not look
realistic.
Since now we have two lights you should reduce the multiplier of the skylight.Try to put a value between 0.4
and 0.7.I have reduced it a lot in my scene,in this way it is clear that the main light source is the area light.I
like the contrast between strong illuminated surfaces and darker surfaces like on “image 9 ”.But at the end it
is your taste which will decide about the multiplier amount of the two lights.Sometimes I create an additional
area light on the opposite side of the first one.If you like to have more than one area light you should disable
the shadow of the light with lower intensity.Too many shadows are confusing and really ugly in a rendering.
Make a rendering.You should have the result of image below.

This is how I normally render objects with no reflections.If you have an object with reflective material you
need to do a few more steps.Let's see why (chrome and other materials are in another FDA tutorial).If you
create an object made of chrome and you go to make a rendering you will have the result of image below.